cellini's Diaryland Diary

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I'm On It.

Last night I saw a a recent picture of her right before I went to sleep. Her eyes looked like something I would like to go swimming in. I thought about the picture as I went to sleep and then I dreamed of her.

What an inconvenient and irrational sensation this is. I know perfectly well that this is hopeless and dumb but there it is anyway. I thought it would pass but week after week goes by and I can't really do anything to stop it. Its no different from clinical depression or nausea and there is no reason why I should feel guilty or embarrassed about it. There is a whole body of neuroscience on this that shows what is happening in my brain right now. In an involuntary response to this specific person's face, voice, words, scent, etc. my brain produces increased serotonin effects that are not unlike those of obsessive-compulsive disorder. I have no conscious control over this. I just wish that if I have to go through this that I could at least enjoy the good part of it as well.

The class this past weekend went well. The guys from the newspaper had a good time and all of the rifles we built went 'bang' properly and demonstrated good accuracy. Everyone went away happy. I think they are doing a 3 or 4 page full color photo spread of it in the Sunday paper this weekend.

The rifle that I built for myself over the weekend is going to be one of my favorites. It is a thing of beauty and awesomeness. A bolt action M@user which I did some very clever and visually distinctive things to. I wrote a magazine article yesterday about the build and as soon as I get some good photos to go with it then I'm going to submit it. My metal working is getting better. I've been a competent carpenter for a long time but only in the last few months have I started learning how to make shit out of steel. I don't have any enormous skill yet but I can heat metal up, bang it into the right shape and then file and polish it into something that works.

I'm supposed to spend the whole 4th of July weekend at Mary and F's place. I would rather just go over there for a few hours but I wasn't consulted. I just desperately want a day or 2 to be at home and take care of things. Its been 2 or 3 weeks since I have had an afternoon at home. The lawn is a mess, 2 faucets are broken and the new front door needs to be cut down and installed. I don't know when I supposed to do this shit when I'm being booked for something out of the house every day that I'm not in the office.

Also I really don't want to drink much. 4th of July stuff with Mary and F will mean lots of alcohol and I would rather like a break from that.

The check that my publisher supposedly mailed last Friday still hasn't shown up. It should be here by Thursday or Friday. I am fucking sick of my whole life being on hold while I wait for this money. This has gone on for about 3 or 4 months now. We're out of milk and I have no money to buy more. People keep asking me how the project for me new book is going and I have nothing to report because I have nothing to fund the travel for it. Its embarrassing.

It feels like everything is moving so damned slowly but I think I really am on my way to being a full time professional writer. The TV show is still in development and there is hope of getting something green-lit in time for a fall season. The sooner I get really rolling with the magazine work, the better. These things don't pay very well but I realized that maybe that's ok since I can write a 2-5k word article really, really fast. Usually this shit works out to less than a dollar an hour but since I'm writing about stuff I already know, I'm looking at usually 3 hours of writing, 30 minutes of fact-checking and then an hour of editing the next day with fresher eyes. Then figure an hour total of back and forth with editors getting it shopped. 6 or 7 hours total for one article. If I get $200 for the piece then that is around $28 an hour, which ain't bad. I just have to stop posting shit straight to my official blog as soon as it is finished rather than editing it into a magazine submission like I should be doing.

A modest goal would be 1 article a week for the next month. See how that works out and how many of them actually get picked up. Increase it from there if that seems practical. I doubt that I would get paid for any of them for months afterward, which means that the key to making this have a meaningful impact on my income and standard of living will be keeping a regular flow of articles moving through the system.

1:25 p.m. - 2010-06-29

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